


(im)permanence

by virdant



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, F/M, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Technically:, season 6 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 09:30:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14375961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virdant/pseuds/virdant
Summary: Cooper has had hundreds of names etched on his skin. Blaine has had one.“What if she’s the one?” Blaine asks, mouth full of toothpaste.Cooper plants his feet on the ground. He points, as dramatically as he can in the cramped bathroom. “Then she’ll wait,” he declares, spitting foam everywhere. “We’ve got the rest of our life. Another day or two won’t hurt.”Blaine spits into the sink, civilized. “What if she’s not?”For years, Cooper has had a litany of names writing their way across his body. Susan is replaced by Lydia is replaced by Jamie is replaced by Jessica is replaced by Audrey is replaced by Nicole is replaced by Elanor. They remain for months at a time before they fade, a hundred connections sparking before fading.Cooper shrugs. “Then we’ll have had a good run of it, and hopefully we’ll part as friends.”





	(im)permanence

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Ellie, who wrote a [delightful CEG soulmate AU](http://anthropologicalhands.tumblr.com/post/173119188990/ceg-fic-every-body-is-a-ledger) and spawned a late-night discussion between us where I decided I was going to write a soulmate AU. As cute as the concept of soulmates as your life-partner is, the concept of _[yuan-fen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuanfen)_ has always been a bigger part of how I view soulmates, and so I wanted to write one that indicated a soulmate as somebody who you shared a connection with, but didn't necessarily mean that you would _stay_ with the person.
> 
>  People change as they grow, and each decision leads to a different path, so it stands to reason that your soulmate can change as you grow. Relationships don't have to last forever.
> 
> I've always felt that my writing should be left for interpretation by the reader, but I suppose it should be said explicitly that while Klaine is a listed pairing, the ending is open-ended and ambiguous and you may read it however you want. You may read at your own discretion.
> 
>  
> 
> **Impermanence** : [not permanent or enduring; transitory.](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/impermanence)

**(im)permanence**

 

 

Kurt sings about a blackbird flying, and Blaine feels a prickle in his chest—as if a name is being etched there, one sure stroke at a time.

 

* * *

 

 

Blaine is five when Cooper falls in love for the first time. Mary Sarah is eleven, like Cooper, always says “Hi” to Blaine when they wait at the bus stop together, and has a green backpack covered in pins and patches. Blaine thinks that she’s the coolest girl he’s ever met.

Cooper agrees.

"Mary Sarah" etches itself across Cooper’s forearm two months after school starts. One night it’s blank, the impression of a blue vein pumping just under his skin, the next night the words appear, faint and blue, so light they almost appear to be faded ink blending into Cooper’s vein.

That morning at the bus stop, Cooper rolls up his sleeve and thrust his arm at Mary Sarah. She giggles, but she doesn’t expose any of her skin in return.

They go out on one date, to the neighborhood park. Blaine tags along at the pressure of his and Cooper’s mother. He swings on the swings while Cooper and Mary Sarah hold hands and giggle. He swings higher and higher, and at the apex, Cooper and Mary Sarah share a kiss.

The name fades, as most childhood names do. One day Cooper comes down with his sleeves rolled up to unblemished arms. The next day he no longer has a girlfriend. They share the bus stop for the rest of the year, and more still. Mary Sarah still smiles in the morning, her backpack amasses more pins, but she stops saying “Hi.”

 

* * *

 

Kurt Hummel is etched in the stark slashes of a blackbird taking flight. Blaine runs a hand over the dark marks underneath dress shirt and tie and blazer.

“Show you mine if you show me yours,” Blaine jokes.

Blaine Anderson is printed in Dalton blue along the back of Kurt’s ear. It’s so small that it’s almost invisible.

“I heard you sing,” Kurt begins.

“I heard you sing,” Blaine repeats, hand over his heart.

They are connected by more than names on their skin. They are connected by circumstance.

 

* * *

 

 

When Cooper is sixteen, he dates Jenn. Jenn is the prettiest girl in high school, according to Cooper, and together they are a “power couple.”

“No, without the quotation marks.” He shoves Blaine’s arms until he drops them. Their dad mutters an obligatory reprimand for Cooper to not shove Blaine.

After two months of dating, “Jennifer” makes its away across Cooper’s ankle. It’s a faint green in bubbly font. It remains that way for the rest of the six months that they date, and one month beyond that. Jennifer breaks up with Cooper in March, and one day in April his ankle is unblemished again.

 

* * *

 

 

Attending McKinley is different from being at Dalton together, and Kurt’s focus: on his old friends, on his NYADA application, on everything he can do move forward without looking back is inevitable.

Blaine goes back to Dalton and meets Sebastian. They get coffee, and Blaine thinks of Kurt’s name, etched deep on his chest. He leans forward, the letters heavy, and says, “I really care about him.”

 

* * *

 

 

Cooper goes to college in LA, with dreams of being an actor. A week into his college career, "Emily Miller" wends its way along the palm of his hand.

Cooper abandons his classes in search for Emily Miller. There are over a dozen on his small campus alone, let along the rest of the city, the state, the country.

He finds Emily Miller in the coffee shop, new to the state just like him, studying acting just like him, rapt and wide-eyed at his ability to do accents and gesticulate. Three months later, settled into his dorm and his classes, the name fades, and Cooper and Emily break up.

 

* * *

 

For weeks, the pain in his eye has been fading, and so has Kurt’s name on his chest, from the bottom up, as if he’s a bird slipping out of Blaine’s grasp.

His eye’s healed, and Kurt is still maddingly distant. His chest is aches when he thinks about the lightening name, and when Kurt’s phone doesn’t stop buzzing, he reaches over and picks it up.

Kurt is moving on. Kurt is leaving him. Kurt’s name is fading from its place above his heart.

Kurt is texting a boy named Chandler.

 

* * *

 

 

When Blaine is fourteen, he’s hospitalized and Cooper does not return home.

Cooper is chasing after the latest name along the side of his index finger. There are thousands of Michelle Nguyens in Los Angeles, and Cooper is systematically searching for his match in every single one.

Blaine starts physical therapy, and Cooper does not return home.

He’s found Michelle, with dimples in her cheeks and laughter in the curve of her cheek. He thinks this might be the one, the one who stays, you understand, don’t you Blainey.

Blaine’s parents fill out the paperwork to send him to Dalton, and Cooper does not return home.

Michelle’s name has faded, as all of them do, and a new one is already making its way along the outside of his wrist. Just another few days, and he’ll know what it says, you’ll understand when you get your first name, Blainey Boy, you’ll understand.

 

* * *

 

 

He checks his chest every morning, standing shirtless before his bathroom mirror. It’s stopped fading, but neither has it grown darker. Blaine traces the mark on his chest before he sends Kurt to New York. He checks its pigmentation every day, wondering if it’s getting fainter or if it’s just his fears manifest.

Blaine can’t see his name along Kurt’s ear when they Skype. At least in person, if he ever doubted, he could sneak a furtive peek under the guise of nuzzling Kurt’s hair. But now he can’t: can’t reach Kurt, can’t see his name, can’t—

He checks the name on his chest, gray and fading fast.

He stares at it every morning and every night. And then Eli messages him.

 

* * *

 

 

Blaine is twenty, and he goes to Los Angeles for a summer. Cooper shows him the sights, dragging him out of the pull-out sofa in the morning. One day they sit by a firepit on the beach until the sun sets and the chill of the night drives them to pull on thick sweaters. Cooper piles the logs into the pit, and Blaine rearranges them so they can light it on fire. The fire is warm, the breeze is cold, and the ocean churns steadily as Cooper presses a hand over his heart, where no name has ever been etched. “Do you know what a soulmate is?”

Blaine says, “The other half of my soul,” and his tongue is heavy in his mouth.

“The name is your soul reaching for the person you need at that moment. It’s who complements you in that point of your life.” He reaches over and presses his palm against Blaine’s heart, his pulse drowned out by the rapid pounding of Blaine’s heart. “And then you grow. And sometimes you don’t need them anymore. Sometimes they grow and you no longer fit together.”

“He’s the love of my life.”

Cooper says, “So was Michelle.”

 

* * *

 

 

He goes to New York with a fading name on his chest and returns to Ohio without one.

Blaine curls around his chest, as if doing so will bring the weight of Kurt’s name, stark and black, back.

“I just want to stop feeling like such a bad person,” he admits.

“You aren’t,” Sam swears, “You’re one of the good guys.”

Blaine shakes his head. He’s gotten and lost his first soulmate mark, and he still doesn’t understand how Cooper could have let them go so easily.

 

* * *

 

 

Blaine is twenty-two, attending NYU’s music program, and Cooper comes to visit him on pretense of attending some New York auditions.

“Who is it now?” Blaine asks, the two of them sharing the tiny bathroom as they try to brush their teeth with fully adult-length limbs.

Cooper props his foot on the toilet seat to check the top of it, where a name is growing in. “Patricia?” he suggests. It’s coming in faint and white, blending in almost perfectly with Cooper’s skin. “It’ll probably show up in a day or two.”

“What if she’s the one?” Blaine asks, mouth full of toothpaste.

Cooper plants his feet on the ground. He points, as dramatically as he can in the cramped bathroom. “Then she’ll wait,” he declares, spitting foam everywhere. “We’ve got the rest of our life. Another day or two won’t hurt.”

Blaine spits into the sink, civilized. “What if she’s not?”

For years, Cooper has had a litany of names writing their way across his body. Susan is replaced by Lydia is replaced by Jamie is replaced by Jessica is replaced by Audrey is replaced by Nicole is replaced by Elanor. They remain for months at a time before they fade, a hundred connections sparking before fading.

Cooper shrugs. “Then we’ll have had a good run of it, and hopefully we’ll part as friends.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Kurt,” Blaine begins, on one knee on the stairs of Dalton Academy where they met for the first time, but just as no name etched itself then, no name (re)etches itself across his heart. “Will you marry me?”

He doesn’t know if his name is still on Kurt’s ear. He doesn’t know if it’s making its way again, Dalton blue, an echo of their time together at Dalton brought back in one monstrous number.

Kurt agrees. A year later, he ends it, again.

“What changed? Was it something that I did?” Blaine asks. He doesn’t touch the empty space above his heart. “Because—because you know… I love you. I love you so much, and I know that we can make this work.”

“I love you too,” Kurt grinds out. “But w-we’re kids.” He shakes his head, looks away, and says, “Look, we had a great run, but let’s call it quits before we completely hate each other.”

 

* * *

 

 

Blaine is twenty-five and Cooper is in his thirties—let’s just say 30, alright, Blainey?—when he graduates from NYU. Cooper sits with their parents, single again. There’s a name coming in along his shoulder blade—Sara is just beginning to form, with more letters coming in afterwards faint and indistinct—and he scratches at it as Blaine walks across the stage and accepts his diploma.

At dinner, Cooper snags an oyster and bears it aloft. “The world is your oyster,” he declares.

“Not that one, I hope,” Blaine mutters, but he’s smiling. His parents before him, his brother beside him, and the world waiting for him to take it.

Cooper shrugs, scooping the meat out and swallowing it down. “There are a lot of oysters,” he says. “Take your pick.”

Blaine rolls his eyes.

“And there’ll be more if you want them,” his mother says, fondly. “Cooper, sit down.”

Cooper sits. He scratches at the name absently. An “h” came in between the end of the ceremony and their dinner reservation. Now the name reads “Sarah” last name pending.

Blaine thinks of the hundreds of names on Cooper’s skin: brief but brilliant. There will undoubtedly be another hundred more. He smiles and focuses on the platter before him, over a dozen oysters on ice and says, “I’ll get through these first.”

 

* * *

 

The heat of summer has yet to taper off into autumn when Blaine wakes. He brushes his teeth and washes his face before checking his chest, a routine borne from years of meticulous worry. Outside, morning traffic begins to clog the streets, one car at a time, but inside, it’s just Blaine and his voice.

He inhales, and along the curve of his lungs, expanding with him on each breath and compressing tight against him as he sings out a single note, is a prickle like a name about to form.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos always appreciated.
> 
> Liked this? [Reblog on Tumblr](https://virdant.tumblr.com/post/173138801521/fic-glee) | [Retweet on Twitter](https://twitter.com/virdant/status/987449981471674373)
> 
> Want to talk writing? Find me as @virdant on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/virdant) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/virdant)


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